In prison, working to help the blind read

By Alan Turner - Tuesday, December 25, 2012
 

Once legally blind — a condition corrected through surgery — Stone spends much of her time at the Mountain View Unit, a state prison for women, translating textbooks, class notes and other educational materials into Braille for use by the visually impaired.

Delores Billman, right, plant manager or Braille at the Mountain View Womens Prison escorts a group of prisoners to work where they translate textbooks into Braille for the blind Tuesday, Dec. 11, 2012, in Gatesville. More than 90 inmates take almost two years of training to work in the facility where they produce about 5,000 to 10,000 Braille pages per month and about 50 to 60 books a year.Photo: Johnny Hanson, Houston Chronicle / © 2012 Houston Chronicle

Combining 21st century computer technology with a coded language invented more than 200 years ago by a blind French boy, the prison workshop's output — distributed by the Atlanta-based Georgia Institute of Technology— opens a world otherwise closed to the visually handicapped.

Garza works with digital tactile graphics in the Braille facility. Photo: Johnny Hanson, Houston Chronicle / © 2012 Houston Chronicle

The program gives Mountain View inmates a reason to get up in the morning, prison officials say, and, potentially, skills to earn a living when they rejoin free society.
 

“They've genuinely taken a sense of ownership over what they're doing,” says Toby Powell, Texas Department of Criminal Justice's supervisor of offender work and training. “They're more than a TDCJ number — they're an individual with a purpose that reaches beyond these walls and in some way gives them hope.”

Tamara Rorie, compliance manager at Georgia Tech's Alternative Media Access Center, says diligent Braille translators can earn up to $50,000 a year.

Delores Billman, right, plant manager or Braille at the Mountain View Womens Prison escorts a group of prisoners to work where they translate textbooks into Braille for the blind Tuesday, Dec. 11, 2012, in Gatesville. More than 90 inmates take almost two years of training to work in the facility where they produce about 5,000 to 10,000 Braille pages per month and about 50 to 60 books a year.Photo: Johnny Hanson, Houston Chronicle / © 2012 Houston Chronicle

Delores Billman oversees Mountain View's Braille operation, a program that started in 1983, ended in 1994, and then was revived in 1999. Each year, she says, her workers process a library's worth of books. Most of the materials are for college students, but occasionally Billman's workers also produce items for elementary or kindergarten students.

The Georgia media center distributes the materials to schools around the nation.

Mountain View, not far from the Central Texas town of Temple, is a place of paradox. It's a 610-inmate maximum security prison and the home of Texas' female death row, yet employs inmates in what arguably are the prison system's most humane programs. In addition to preparing Braille materials, prisoners also train service dogs for the handicapped.

Inmates must apply for positions in Billman's program, the only such training in Texas prisons, and scores of names typically fill the waiting list for openings. The supervisor says basic training begins with a year-long program administered by the U.S. Library of Congress. But additional training to handle mathematics, music and foreign language books also is available.

Although the women's work is performed on computers, Billman begins their training on a vintage Perkins Brailler, a manual typewriter that uses keystrokes to emboss raised dots on sheets of paper.

Mountain View women employ computer programs to translate texts into Braille, and much of their work consists of editing and fine-tuning the texts. But they are required to have a basic understanding of Braille, the six dot-coded letters, words and punctuation developed in the early 19th century by Louis Braille, who lost his eyesight to a childhood accident.

By 15, the boy had adapted the French military's embossed “night writing” code for use by the visually impaired.

Alexa Garza, 33, who is serving 20 years for murder, works with the digital tactile graphics in the Braille facility at the Mountain View Womens Prison where they translate textbooks into Braille for the blind Tuesday, Dec. 11, 2012, in Gatesville. Garza hopes to continue the work when she is released. "We are the eyes and the ears for the blind," Garza said. "It's a way to give back. I'm not just drawing a map of Africa, I'm helping them see it." More than 90 inmates take almost two years of training to work in the facility where they produce about 5,000 to 10,000 Braille pages per month and about 50 to 60 books a year. Photo: Johnny Hanson, Houston Chronicle / © 2012 Houston Chronicle

Mountain View worker Alexa Garza, 30, a Galveston woman serving a 20-year murder sentence, has learned to read Braille with her fingers and her eyes. After her five-hour work shift, she says, she often spends hours in her quarters studying to improve her skills. “This takes passion, heart and initiative,” she says. “No one asks you to do this. You choose to do it.”

The prison workshop, in many respects, has become a de facto classroom for inmates who process a wide range of materials.

Works by Mark Twain, Louisa May Alcott, Ernest Hemingway and Edgar Allan Poe— not to mention tomes of math, science, geography — all pass beneath the women's busy fingers.

“Honestly,” said Lucretia Manuel, 37, serving life for murdering a 7-month-old child in Dallas, “I really was interested in a geography book that showed the differences in culture. That really blew my mind. I've always been interested in other cultures and the different ways people live.”

Manuel says she was drawn to the Braille program by a desire to help others. “I felt that maybe after all my gloom and doom maybe I could help someone, a child or student, who was visually impaired,” she said. “I always was a helper.”

Stone, 50, who was an insurance investigator at the time of her conviction, was lured by the program's promise of intellectual stimulation. “I looked at it as an educational thing,” she said. “It offered something to learn ... I like the quick pace, the deadlines, the quick turnover, the business atmosphere.”

Stone said she was especially touched when she learned the name of the intended recipient of one of the first books she translated. “That math book really sticks out for me,” she says. “I'll never forget Timmie. It was inspiring to know whose hands were going to be on my work.”

In a larger sense, Stone, who long suffered from extremely poor vision, says she is moved by the plight of all the men and women who benefit from her work.

“A lot of times,” she says, “I think of how that could have been me.”

alan.turner@chron.com